This document discusses iOS storyboards, which provide a visual representation of an app's user interface and the transitions between screens. Storyboards allow connecting view controllers and defining segues between them. While storyboards make prototyping and Auto Layout easier, they have disadvantages like performance issues when loading and lack of reusability. The document recommends using multiple storyboards divided logically rather than one large storyboard.
4. A storyboard is a visual representation of the app’s user interface,
showing screens of content and the transitions between them.
iOS5+ SDK
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10. Present the content in the detail or master area
depending on the content of the screen.
Present the content modally.
Present the content as a popover anchored to
an existing view.
A custom segue enabling you
to write your own behaviors.
show
modal
popover
custom
11. A Scene Corresponds to a Single View Controller and Its Views
• On iPhone, each scene corresponds to a full screen’s worth of content; on iPad, multiple scenes can
appear on screen at once—for example, using popover view controllers. Each scene has a dock, which
displays icons representing the top-level objects of the scene. The dock is used primarily to make
action and outlet connections between the view controller and its views.
• As with all objects loaded from a story board, to finish initializing a view controller loaded from a
storyboard you override awakeFromNib.
A Segue Manages the Transition Between Two Scenes
• You can set the type of transition (for example, modal or push) on a segue. Additionally, you can
subclass a segue object to implement a custom transition.
• You can pass data between scenes with the method prepareForSegue:sender:, which is invoked
on the view controller when a segue is triggered. This method allows you to customize the setup of the
next view controller before it appears on the screen. Transitions usually occur as the result of some
event, such as a button being tapped, but you can programmatically force a transition by calling
performSegueWithIdentifier:sender: on the view controller.
12. Storyboards have a number of advantages:
• With a storyboard you have a better conceptual overview of all the
screens in your app and the connections between them.
• Storyboards can describe the transitions between the various
views. These transitions are called “segues” and you create them by
connecting your view controllers right in the storyboard.
• Storyboards make working with table views a lot easier with
prototype cells and static cells features.
• Storyboards make it easier to use Auto Layout, a feature that
allows you to define mathematical relationships between elements
that defined their position and sizing.
13. Storyboards as a useful tool, but not so much a replacement as a
complement for NIBs and custom code.
Storyboards are the right choice in some, but not all situations.
16. A classic beginner’s mistake is to create one massive project-wide
Storyboard.
A Storyboard is a board with a story to tell. It shouldn't be used to
mix unrelated stories into one big volume.
A storyboard should contain view controllers that are logically
related to each other—which doesn’t mean every view controller.
17. Large Storyboards, other than being difficult to browse and
maintain, add a layer of complexity to a team environment:
when multiple developers work on the same storyboard file at the
same time, source control conflicts are inevitable.
18. The id itself doesn’t provide any indication whatsoever as
to its true significance, so you have nothing to work with.
19. Performance
• when a Storyboard is loaded, all of its view controllers are instantiated immediately.
Fortunately, this is just an abstraction and not true of the actual implementation
Prototypes
• Storyboards simplify the prototyping and mocking up of user interfaces and flow.
Reusability
• a single view controller cannot be individually extracted and reused elsewhere as a
single independent entity; it’s dependent on the rest of the Storyboard to function.
Data flow
• Storyboards take care of handling the flow between view controllers, but not the flow
of data. So, the destination controller has to be configured with code, overriding the
visual experience.
20. References
• Storyboard - iOS Developer Library
• About Storyboards - iOS Developer Library
• iOS User Interfaces: Storyboards vs. NIBs vs. Custom Code -
toptal
• 10 practical tips for iOS developers using storyboards - xmcgraw
• Storyboard, Xibs & co… - polarios
• Storyboards Tutorial in Swift: Part1 - raywenderlich
